Sweets, Sweets, Sweets

Treats from a French pastry shop in Yokosuka

If you know our family, then you know we all love sweets.  Believe it or not, one of the concerns I had about moving to Japan was how on earth were we going to get our sugar fix.  I figured that most Japanese people are petite and they must never eat sweets.   Boy was I wrong.  Japanese love treats. 

Pastry shops and sweet shops are everywhere in Yokosuka.  We've found a couple different places that we enjoy going to.  The first is in the basement of More's City (for those of you raised in Seattle, this reminds me of the basement of the old Frederick and Nelson's).  You grab a tray and tongs (never your hand like Mercer tried to do)  and start choosing from the fresh pastries, breads, rolls, etc.  There's such an interesting variety and most everything we've gotten (except the corn-topped pastry) is worth getting a second time.  We've had a couple pastries with bean paste because we thought it was reminiscent of chocolate.  They were okay, just tasted different on the palate.  The other pastry shop we like is Vie de France on Blue Street.  They had delicious tasting strawberry and chocolate muffins, twist donuts that weren't greasy and pastries filled with Nutella.  I'm biased because I like the French pastry shop the best.  They know how to put more sugar into their goodies.

While we seem to gravitate towards food that we recognize, there have been times when we've gotten something that looked good on the menu but had a unique taste once it was in front of us.  For instance, Justin ordered a ice cream sundae at Denny's (they have them here, but the menu is not representative whatsoever of the ones in the U.S.) that had tapioca balls, green tea ice cream and beans in it.  Interesting combination.  Not so sure we'll ever order that one again, but at least we can say we tried it!